DOVER — The Fifth Amendment, a broad but powerful legal protection for Americans, will be the topic of discussion in a hearing to compel Loraine Skaltsis to testify in court next month.

Lorraine has pleaded the Fifth more than 90 times since February, according to court documents, during meetings for creditors in her bankruptcy court hearings. Meanwhile, her husband is a patient in a psychiatric ward since attempting suicide three months before being charged with operating a Ponzi scheme and scamming local residents of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The Attorney General’s office says Nickolas Sklatsis is $1.2 million in debt.

Court documents show Lorraine has $2 million in liabilities.

While Lorraine has the right to plead the Fifth, to not be held to answer in the hearings, the 21 local residents who invested with her husband want to know where their money is today.

Two investors, Donald Andolina and William DiProfio, filed the motion to compel Lorraine to answer earlier this month. In the motion, they said Lorraine waived her privilege of pleading the Fifth when responding to cross-examination and that she should “be compelled to provide responsive and substantive answers to questions from creditors.”

The motion states, “Allowing Debtor to continue to assert the privilege against self incrimination would hinder the Court’s ability to make the essential determinations regarding Debtor’s eligibility for discharge ...”

Every American citizen has the constitutional right to plead the Fifth Amendment.

When asked why one would plead the Fifth during a bankruptcy case, Albert Scherr, a University of New Hampshire Law School professor, said, “The judge could declare you bankrupt and give your assets to creditors or you could go to jail on what you say. What would you choose?”

Richard J. Lehmann, of Douglas, Leonard & Garvey, P.C., who previously worked as Assistant Attorney General for the New Hampshire Department of Justice and as an Assistant Prosecutor at the Merrimack County Attorney’s Office and legal counsel to the New Hampshire Senate, said if the answer could subject her to criminal liability, “she is allowed to assert the Fifth Amendment because she can’t be forced to give evidence against herself.”

According to Eric Forcier of the state’s bureau of securities regulation, Nickolas’s case is a criminal case being investigated by the Attorney General’s office while Lorraine’s case is not criminal and is being treated separately. However, the state is still involved in Lorraine’s case.

“We’re at the hearings because it is our administrative case,” Forcier said, adding, “We’re a creditor with respect to Nickolas and we’re doing everything we can for the people victimized by him.”

Forcier has been present during the continuation of the meeting for creditors in Lorraine’s bankruptcy case.

He has asked her questions throughout the meetings, such as her previous employment and how she and Nickolas made money through the real estate management entities they owned; if she had ever seen the promissory notes made from the business to 21 local investors and if she knew where the money from the investors was being deposited.

To these, and more than 80 other questions, Lorraine has pleaded the Fifth Amendment.

According to Lehmann, people only have the right to plead the Fifth to questions that may incriminate them through their testimony.

Scherr said the amendment gives people the right to not criminalize themselves, but that there are ways around it.

First, he said, the Attorney General’s Office could grant her immunity.

”Meaning, nothing she says in bankruptcy hearings could be used against her outside of the hearing,” he said, adding that this will take away her Fifth Amendment privilege in the hearings.

Second, if the party seeking to compel her testimony can convince the judge it is not possible that anything would be used against her, no criminal liability, Sherr said they can compel her to testify, but the decision lies in the hands of the judge.

“If the party can’t convince the judge, then they should not be able to compel her to testify,” he said.

Lehmann said that if the court finds that evidence would not incriminate her, such as saying what her job title was at her previous part-time position, they can force her to answer and put her in jail if she does not answer.

The hearing on the motion to compel is scheduled for May 21. According to Lehmann, the judge will do a background check on what is and is not incriminating to Lorraine to determine what she needs to answer and what she does not need to answer.

“You can always file a motion, but just because you file doesn’t mean you are going to get it,” Scherr said. “But, why not try and see what happens?”

Andolina and DiProfio’s attorney, Brian D. Kenyon, from Keri Marshall Law, said the goal of his clients is to simply seek the truth.

“If she said X is worth $10,000, then we want to know where she got that figure and if she doesn’t have the answer, then we can’t get to the truth,” he said, adding this all comes down to cross-examination.

He said he found it bizarre that Lorraine would answer one question and then plead the Fifth to a follow-up question.

He said the questions asked in the upcoming hearing will be limited to the representation she made under oath in her bankruptcy testimony regarding assets.

“We are seeking the ability to test those statements,” he said.

According to Scherr, he would advise Lorraine to continue to plead the Fifth just like her current attorney, Hamilton R. Krans, Jr., is doing.

“I would be telling her to do exactly what she is doing until or unless the opposing party makes the formal promise of immunity,” he said. “Until they say there is no way we are going to charge you, until they say that in a formal way with a grant from the Attorneys General Office of immunity, she will continue, she should continue, to assert her Fifth privilege because there are circumstances of just simply her awareness of what her husband is doing and her failure to act that could subject her to criminal liability.”

Scherr said the problem with Lorraine and Nickolas’s cases, even though they are being treated separately, is that they are “intertwined.”

“That’s the problem,” he said. “If she has no possible criminal liability, she can’t assert her Fifth privilege just to protect her husband, but to the extent that she is aware of what her husband is doing, and to the extent they can show her participation in what he is doing in any number of ways, she can be charged as an accomplice to what her husband is doing.”Scherr said if Lorraine is granted immunity, Nickolas and his public defender, Carl Swenson, are the ones who should be nervous.

“They don’t want her to be granted immunity because then she is answering questions that could get her husband in trouble,” he said.